I do honestly think it's amazing, and it's easily well up my own personal Top However Many. The screenplay is easily one of the best adaptions I've ever read and the direction matches it - beautifully paced, aided by awesome photography and score.

Plus, like all these things, "mawkish" and "glossy" are surely only style terms; they're only "bad" if there's no substance there to back it up. I think Shawshank has tons of substance. It's probably humanism's greatest film actually :-P